Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says • Hacker News Board

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#381

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #299

erikpukinskis wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans are the best off we have ever been This is too broad to be true. It's easily disproven with a single counterexample. I could guess what you actually meant, but the tiny details in sentences like these change so much meaning I better let you clarify if this was an important point you're making. Especially since you seem to be aiming to dismiss concerns about people who are not safe, I think it's important you…

Ok here are some of the areas where we are better off than ever looking at humanity as a whole: * Infant mortality * Life expectancy * Maternal mortality * Global poverty * Opportunities for women * Global literacy * Ability to control pain * Knowledge Here is a more concrete example. Imagine you are going to be born as a baby girl in a random family on earth. In what other time would you have a better chance of havi…

Thank you for clarifying, this is much easier to have a discussion about.

I have two open questions, I won't try to make a counterclaim (that 2019 is worse), but I can point out where your position feels hollow to me and needs to be shored up.

1) If I accept what you're saying that for the average person life is better in 2019 than in 1950, that doesn't generalize to all humans. My assessment is that life has been pretty good for the average human regardless of the time period, and good governance is more about how bad we let it get for the marginalized few than how good it is in the average case.

2) You listed things that are better for the average human... Are you claiming that there is not an equal (or larger) set of things that's worse? For example: depression, loneliness, anxiety. If your children are all living but you rarely speak to them and are cripplingly lonely, is that a better outcome than having 7 children, four of whom died, and you live in an intact healthy family unit?

(Also, as a side note knowledge is not monotonically increasing with "progress". The Catholic Church tried and partly succeeded at destroying all native language books in Central America, and replaced them with books that seemingly include much less knowledge. Social knowledge loss is one of my biggest concerns with modernity: More knowledge accessible to any individual, less knowledge stored in the overall system. Less culturally usable knowledge for most individuals. Another example: we're probably only just getting back to the same level of total beer making knowledge that was embodied in the system before the mass market beer system.)

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Post by titzer » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

jlokier wrote: post #253

titzer wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The current forms of government It's not the form of government, it's not the form of society, it's a psychological vulnerability that has been exacerbated by the invention of agriculture, currency, paper money, and now digital money. It's about accumulation of goods as a hedge against future insecurity, when the irony is that the pursuit of the accumulation of goods and earthly wealth is exactly the thing that has…

I agree, and I think that was well articulated. Do you have any ideas for solving it?

Well, short of most humans becoming monks? :)

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Post by dogcomplex » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

CM30 wrote: post #371

kilroy123 wrote: post #120

I have a theory, and I have no evidence to back this theory up. The increases in anxiety in the general public over the last decade or so is in large part to people knowing we're on an unsustainable path. We're all collectively marching towards the edge of the cliff to jump off together. More people than ever have anxiety because we subconsciously (or consciously) know this. We're unsustainable with how we pollute an…

Maybe, though I suspect the income inequality/political instability side is causing more anxiety than the environmental one. The latter is certainly more of a focus now than it was before, but the money side probably plays more on people's minds. A lot of old life advice isn't working any more, people are finding their kids may have a worse quality of life than they did and governments are doing nothing to fix it. An…

Same thing. Money = flexibility and control. People may feel the environmental anxiety, but feel powerless to do anything about it because they have to spend all their time working (if they can) to make ends meet. Social media stats/clicks are a similar race to the bottom to make money. Overall there's a sense that every part of our lives, environment, social sphere, and future is being over-leveraged, over-risked, and is hanging from a high wire above oblivion.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Post by pmayrgundter » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #322

Loughla wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have links to any decent analysis of that model? Because the only things I've been able to digest are the criticisms (the majority of what I've found is that the model does not accurately reflect the world we live in). I'm not trying to confirmation bias myself here, but I would like to see what the proponents have to say.

Here is a pretty good one IMO (loooong read): https://jancovici.com/en/readings/societies/the-limits-to-gr... Another article that explains well what the model does, that economists do as if matter and laws of physics didn't exist (unless they're of the rare breed of Georgescu-Roegen's disciples): https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/societal-choices/... Another article from another source: https://dothemath.uc…

This (esp the first figure) reminds me of economics research on long waves:

http://joshuagoldstein.com/jgcycle.htm

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Post by perfunctory » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

jlokier wrote: post #248

perfunctory wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the number of people currently having to work more than one job, it's hard to see how they can switch to part-time. "I don't know the circumstances of every person on the planet and therefor don't know what they can do. But I think I know what HN crowd could do."

I'm sure your comment is making a point, but to be honest I can't be sure what it is. My point was that switching to part-time seems unachievable to me for the majority of people, without changing other factors at the same time, and so we should simultaneously enquire how you recommend to deal with those other factors, for the advice to be most effective. I don't wish to dismiss the advice; I wish to understand how t…

Well, so my thinking is along these lines. What we now call "full-time" - 40 hours a week - is not a law of nature. It's a social construct. In the beginning of the industrial revolution everybody worked 12 hours a day without the weekend. Labor movement (or was it Henry Ford? I don't know) pushed for shorter working week. It didn't seem to destroy the economy. So I don't see why we can't make it even shorter. And HN crowd, as indeed relatively well off, can lead the way. As more and more people work "part" time it might change the popular perception and eventually the rest of the society and regulation might follow.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Post by ApolloFortyNine » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

uhtred wrote: post #306

jniedrauer wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going completely vegan is pretty difficult. You can get 95% of the way there with a pesco-vegetarian diet for half of the effort and cost.

Why is it difficult? If someone is still eating eggs, dairy and fish they are not 95% of the way to being vegan. And cost? What makes you think being vegan is more expensive than eating animal products?

Getting the same amount of protein is difficult? I've never seen someone try to argue going vegan is cheaper then eating meat. Maybe cheaper than eating steaks, but chicken breast/thighs and ground beef? Eggs are also an excellent source of protein, it comes out to about a $1 for 80g of protein.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Post by etrautmann » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #324

Unpopular to say, but people as a group will not change. it won't just happen. We will destroy part of earth and as a consequence we will engineer a fix for it. It is maybe an unfortunate thing. But that's how we people work. We mess up first and clean after. It's quite unrealistic to expect the world to look the same in 100 years from now. We will slowly take control over every single square feet on this planet. Tha…

This binary view is completely unhelpful towards a solution. We've taken important steps towards protecting the environment before (Montreal protocol, clean air act, etc) and have mobilized tens of millions of people to work on crucial problems, as in WWII.

Many small and incremental improvements can have important and large scale effects over time, and humans are occasionally capable of rising to the occasion if it becomes severe enough.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Post by tomp » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #221

C14L wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Club of Rome" report[1] was published in the early 1970s. We've known for a long time. Still, most people probably still don't know, because they are too busy shopping for the latest shoes or cars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

Gaël Giraud (Chief economist of the French Agency for Development) said something along these lines: In economy, usually when someone builds a model that predicts the future for 18 months they later get the Nobel. The World III model from the Meadows Report almost exactly described the world for more than 45 years. If we may think that it's still modelling our world exactly enough, complete civilisational collapse wi…

How much of that is just survivalship bias though? As in, if you were to asked to bet on a 50-year-in-the-future model in 1970s, would you have picked this model?

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Post by kaybe » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #289

malvosenior wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that this is true. Do previous ice ages not count? Or how about the plague? It seems that we've been near extinction at least a few times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck I'd also add that until the 1990s the threat of total nuclear annihilation of the human race (and probably other stuff) was very real. That was anxiety inducing.

I agree, and this time we have a lot more knowledge and tools for coping with ecological disasters.

It would still be very much preferable to not have to do it.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Post by option » Mon, May 06, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

TheBeardKing wrote: post #379

option wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, I wish it were that easy! Democrats were the main driving force (see Kelly’s earlier career) behind demonizing and reducing nuclear power. We can significantly reduce carbon emissions by using the safest power generation by far - nuclear energy. Instead California is going to pathetically miss its emission targets due to nuclear power plant closure and despite Bernie’s denial the closure of Vermonts nuclear p…

I think you're missing the forest for the trees. With only a passing interest in environmental policy and without doing any research, I can think of numerous environmental policies rolled back or being rolled back by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans. To even act like the two national parties are even closely aligned on environmental policy is simply sticking your head in the sand.

I do think Democrats care much more about environment than Republicans. However, the Democratic opposition to nuclear basically nukes (pun intended) all their environmental progress because energy generation is an environmental “elephant” in the room for climate change.